by Rick Partlow
“Boss, do you read?” It was Sander’s voice, and he sounded excited.
“Yeah, I’m here, Sanders,” I told him, pushing off the bulkhead and stepping towards the ramp as if I could see him out of it. “You okay?”
“Yeah, we’re good; we’ll be there in a second. But we’ve got one of them, Boss.”
“Got one of what?” I was a bit slow on the uptake.
“One of the guys that attacked us,” Sanders explained. I switched to the feed from his helmet cam and saw a figure in the dark, shifting camouflage of the Stealth armor the enemy soldiers had worn being pushed in front of Waugh, his hands secured with a zip tie, her Gauss rifle muzzle pushing against the middle of his back. “Stupid fucker fell off a cliff and knocked the wind out of himself and we grabbed him. We’re bringing him to you.”
“Good work, Eli,” I said. “Get here ASAP and shoot him in the leg if he tries to run.”
I pulled off my helmet and turned to Bobbi, feeling the expression on my face turn hard and cold. “Get one of the medical tables here into the bay and get it ready to strap him down. Time to find out just who these assholes are, and who sent them.”
Chapter Three
His name was Corporal Braden Vilberg and he was very, very sorry. That much became clear almost from the moment we stripped off his helmet.
“Oh, my God, I’m so sorry,” he repeated again, sweat pouring down his pale, doughy face. His hair was dark and matted and his eyes were wide and white around dark brown and flitting back and forth like a bird’s, trying to stare at Kane, Kurt, Bobbi and me, as if he couldn’t determine who he should be most afraid of. “Really, we didn’t know who you were, we thought you were with the raiders!”
“Yeah,” Bobbi grunted, yanking open the front of his Stealth armor and pulling the sleeves down his arms, “and who the hell is ‘we,’ asshole?”
He was wearing some sort of dark blue uniform fatigues under his armor and the patch on the arm answered the question before he could. It was some sort of unit logo, with a stylized lion rampant on a hill of red rock and a roman numeral ten across it. Beneath the image were the words: Savage/Slaughter LLC.
“Savage Slaughter?” I repeated, jabbing his shoulder hard with my finger and sending him flinching backwards. “What the hell is that, some kind of joke?”
His answer was delayed by Kurt and Bobbi hauling him backwards to the cot Bobbi had fastened to the deck in the utility bay. His breath went out in a labored chuff as he fell into the cot then had Kurt put a knee into his chest while Bobbi fastened the restraint straps across his chest and legs.
“N…no,” he wheezed, shaking his head and jerking against the restraints. “We’re contractors, just like you! We work off of Highland, got our own land there, our own base. We were hired by the Sung Brothers Cartel to take out whoever’s been ripping off their weapons shipments!” He looked at me pleadingly. “They never told us they’d hired another crew for the same job!”
“We’re not contractors,” I corrected him, maybe being a little hair-splitting in my definition, “and we don’t work for the Sung Brothers.” I saw incomprehension in his eyes and decided I sucked at interrogation. I was supposed to be getting information, not giving it away. “If the Sung Brothers knew the raiders were here, why didn’t they send their own people instead of hiring you?”
“I don’t know much,” he admitted. “I’m just a grunt; I only got hired a couple months ago. But I don’t think the Sung Brothers found this outpost, I think Captain Calderon did.”
“Who’s Captain Calderon? Your CO?” That was Bobbi, her voice sharp and demanding. She’d probably be better at this than I was, if I was any judge of character.
“He’s the ground commander for this op,” Vilberg volunteered. “He’s the CO of Charlie Company; I think he was a platoon leader in the Marines during the war.”
“And how did ‘Captain’ Calderon find out about this place?” I wanted to know.
“Like I said, I’m just a grunt,” he insisted, then shrugged diffidently. “But we got this ‘advisor’ along on this operation, this woman named Cameron.” He snorted. “No last name, you know? Just Cameron.” He smirked conspiratorially, like we were all battle buddies sharing rumors over chow. “I think she’s a spook. DSI, you know?”
“Shit,” Kurt muttered. I didn’t comment but felt a solid, silent agreement. If the Department of Security and Intelligence was involved in this, then things were much more complicated than I’d hoped. I’d had dealings with them during the war, and those hadn’t always been entirely pleasant. The last I’d heard, they were a wholly owned unofficial subsidiary of my mother’s portion of the Corporate Council.
“Who does this Cameron believe is hiring the raiders?” I asked him. That was something Divya hadn’t been able to tell us.
“Everybody knows that,” Vilberg spluttered as if I’d asked him whether Santa Claus was real. “It’s the bratva, of course.”
***
“Okay,” I said, propped up against the control panel, leaning back on the deactivated main viewscreen in the Nomad’s cockpit, “here’s the situation.”
All seven of us, minus Divya who was still in the auto-doc, were crammed into the cockpit because Vilberg was still trussed up in the utility bay and I didn’t feel like moving him for this little planning session. Victor was leaning against the back of an acceleration couch, his injured leg swaddled in a smart bandage. Kane sat in the pilot’s station and said nothing; his biological eye was unfocused and I wondered if he even cared enough to listen.
“The second planet out from this system’s primary is Peboan, which is one of the less inhospitable Pirate Worlds, for those of you who didn’t pay attention to the mission brief. It’s still only got one big city, Shakak, and not one but two criminal gangs that are trying to control it.”
I paused, taking a drink out of a squeeze bulb of fruit juice. I’d shoved down a few protein bars before we convened and I could feel the empty pit in my stomach starting to fill and the light-headedness beginning to fade. It was the effects of the nanites starting to heal me; you had to give them fuel to work with or they’d cannibalize your blood sugar and muscle protein.
“Shakak was run by the Novya Moscva bratva for years, a bunch of immigrants from what was left of Russia on Earth, which wasn’t much after the Sino-Russian War. They got complacent, though, and a new outfit moved in. They call themselves the Sung Brothers, though God only knows if they’re brothers or if their actual name is Sung. They’ve basically taken over the bratva’s arms operation, stolen their business right out from under them by offering a better deal to the black-market connections that can provide stolen or illegally manufactured military grade weapons.” I shrugged expressively.
“Of course, the Russians aren’t too happy about this, and whenever the Sung Brothers try to cache their weapons on Peboan, they do their best to steal them and put a crimp in the competition. So, the Sung Brothers have taken to storing them off-world, on junked insystem freighters or moons or asteroids. That way, they can retrieve them when they have a buyer. Now, these raiders like the ones we hit today have started hitting the off-world stashes and stealing those.”
“Why don’t the Sungs just have the weapons shipped directly from the people they’re buying them from to the ones they’re selling them to?” Sanders wondered.
I looked over at him, sprawled out over the navigation station’s couch, and realized with something of a start just how much he’d changed since the first time we’d worked together, and not just because of the short, close-cropped beard he’d grown. You tended not to notice, working with someone day to day, but for some reason it just struck me right then. He’d sharpened and leaned out in the last couple years from the soft-around-the-edges construction manager I’d found on Hermes. His former lover, Carmen Ibanez, had been on our original team and had died on our first mission on Thunderhead. It had hardened him, and sometimes I wondered if that was a good thing.
“They
could,” I answered his question, “but that would reduce their profits and increase lead times. Guys who sneak proton cannons out of a Commonwealth military warehouse can’t just do it to order; it takes preparations. If the bratva can deliver the weapons quicker at a slightly higher price, they’ll force the Sung Brothers out of the business, and that’s the idea.”
“The Sungs hired these Savage/Slaughter assholes?” Waugh asked, a vein throbbing in her temple. Her skin was too dark to see it, but I could tell she was flushed with anger. She and Prouty had been close. “These mercenaries?”
“Contractors,” Bobbi corrected with quiet sarcasm.
“Yeah,” I confirmed, nodding. “But apparently there’s some involvement by the DSI in all this, too. I don’t know what the hell that means, but it isn’t good.” I spread my hands. “Here’s why I brought you all together. We lost a couple friends tonight. It’s a kick in the balls, and I know everyone would like some payback. But the mercs that actually killed them are dead, and as far as I can tell, the people who sent them were hunting the same raiders we were and just thought we were them.”
“Fog of war,” Sanders muttered.
“So, we just go home?” Waugh asked, righteous indignation practically dripping off her tone. “Pretend they didn’t kill Prouty and O’Neill?”
“Believe me,” I said, holding onto patience with both hands, “I’d like nothing better than to kick the guy’s ass who sent them in here half-cocked, but we’d be submerging ourselves into a world of shit; and without orders from Divya or some other higher authority, we wouldn’t be getting paid for it.”
“I don’t like getting shot,” Victor said, face sour as he looked at his leg. “I’d like to make someone hurt for that.”
“Fuckin’ A,” Kurt put in, slapping his brother on the arm. I fought back a snort. Thunder was more likely to abandon lightning than Kurt Simak was to go against his brother.
“You know what I like less than getting shot?” Bobbi Taylor remarked acerbically, eyeing the gargantuan twins with a baleful glare. “Getting shot when I’m not getting paid for it.”
“Well, you won’t have to worry about that, Sgt. Taylor.”
I blinked as I looked past my collected team and saw Divya climbing up the short steps into the cockpit. She was standing as straight and strong as if she hadn’t been shot in the gut and blown up just a few hours ago, not a hair out of place and even her suit perfect. I knew the auto-doc was responsible for healing her body, but I had to think the suit was some kind of ultra-expensive, self-repairing nano-material. Unless she had a whole collection just like it stowed away in the cabin she shared in shifts with Bobbi and Waugh.
“I thought you’d be stuck in that thing for a while longer, Divya,” I commented, carefully not saying “I hoped.”
“No such luck, Captain Munroe,” she said with a smirk. I grimaced. She only called me “Captain” when she was trying to get under my skin. I’d never been anything higher than a Sergeant, but I was in command of this unit, so maybe I could technically have given myself the rank…if I were a complete asshole.
“The auto-doc kicked me out; I suppose I’m too nasty to kill.” She laughed, an unpleasant sound. “I was able to hear most of your discussion and I’m here to relieve you of the need to make a strategic decision. I have supplementary instructions from Captain West that cover these circumstances.”
“Of course you do,” Bobbi muttered, running a hand over her face.
I didn’t say anything. The fact she had instructions about this meant she---and Cowboy---knew more about the situation than they’d told us. That worried me, but I’d been trying to piece together Andre Damiani’s big-picture plan from the fragments that Cowboy and now Divya had given to us to accomplish, and this could be a large piece. What was out here that he wanted?
“What’s the op?” I asked her, trying to keep my face and voice bland and emotionless. Divya was many things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. If I seemed too eager, she’d get suspicious.
“Intelligence gathering.” She moved into the cockpit, squeezing between Victor and Kurt with a condescending pat on their arms, and sat down on the console beside me, uncomfortably close. She smelled of some strange, herbal scent that might have been a perfume or shampoo or maybe some sort of skin lotion, but it was cloyingly strong and I wished I could move away.
“I understand you’ve suffered a loss today,” she allowed, spreading her hands demonstratively, “and I wouldn’t ask you to jump into another combat situation short two soldiers…”
“They weren’t soldiers,” Bobbi corrected her. “They were both Recon Marines.”
She was right; that had become a prerequisite for hiring a new troop. Kane was Fleet, but he was our pilot, and Victor and Kurt had been civilians, but I’d grandfathered them in because I’d trained them personally on Demeter during the Tahni occupation. They’d fought in front-line conditions for a solid year as part of the civilian resistance, and gone through more shit than any three Marines I knew. Well, except me.
“My apologies,” Divya said, managing to shut down Bobbi and yet still sound condescending. “Short two Marines. But our employers require more detailed, boots-on-the-ground intelligence about the situation on Peboan and you are going to provide it.”
“We’re just going to land in the middle of Shakak,” Sanders asked skeptically, “and go marching down the street like we own the place? From what Munroe said, it’s basically a war zone right now.”
“Please remember who we work for, Sergeant Sanders,” she chided him. “We are not without contacts and connections, even out here. You’ll have to get us there; and I admit, that may be tricky. But once we arrive, I’ll get you where you need to go.”
“Get everything buttoned up,” I ordered, pushing away from the console. There was no use arguing with her about it; the last year with her had taught me that much. “We’ve been sitting here too long and I don’t want to wait around for that lighter to come back and finish the job. Kane, once we’re out of the gas giant’s gravity well, jump us into Transition Space and then bring us back in as close as we can get to Peboan.”
The others began to clamber out of the compartment, but Bobbi stayed behind and motioned back towards the utility bay.
“What are we gonna’ do with Corporal Shitbird back there?”
I followed her gesture, frowning in thought. We could strand him here. There were a couple pallets of food and water left back at the raider camp, which would last him until his people came to check on their squad.
“If you don’t want to waste ammunition,” Divya suggested sweetly, nothing in her pleasant smile suggesting the darkness deep down inside her, “we could shove him out the airlock once we’re in orbit.”
“We’ll take him with us,” I decided, scowling at her. “He might be useful as a go-between if we have to talk to his people.”
She sniffed, brushing past me on her way out of the cockpit.
“If I didn’t know better,” she scoffed over her shoulder, “I’d think you were going soft, Munroe.”
“Maybe you should be happy I’m going soft, Divya,” I responded curtly, “Otherwise, I would have left your ass out there to die.”
Chapter Four
Peboan was a white, harsh world with ice caps that stretched across nearly half the land mass of its polar continents and massive glaciers hugging the crags of the jagged mountains between. Compared to Earth or Demeter or Hermes or Eden or any of the other main-line human colonies, its oceans were small but numerous, separated by broad isthmus---isthmuses, isthmi? What the hell was the plural of isthmus, anyway? ---that might have been islands in a warming phase. And maybe they would be, someday; and when that happened, whatever civilization existed would flock to the world and it would be considered a paradise.
Right now, though, it was largely a frozen hell with narrow bands of livable territory near the equator that had been seized and ceded and fought over endlessly for decades by the outcasts and exiles
and criminals that called this place home.
“Pretty,” Kane commented from the pilot’s station as we began to de-orbit.
I glanced at him with amusement as I felt the fusion drives kicking me in the pants, pressing me into my acceleration couch. The cyborg could squeeze more feeling and humor into one, atonal word than most people could into a soliloquy, once you got to know him.
“I thought you were saving up for more body mods,” I said, pushing it past the pressure on my chest from the acceleration. “It’s been almost three years now and you don’t have anything more than the day I ran into you on Belial. Doesn’t Cowboy pay you enough?”
He held up his right hand, making a fist then stretching out the fingers, and I noticed that it seemed more supple and flexible than it used to.
“Quality,” he informed me. “Not quantity.”
“Right.”
“There’s no orbital traffic control for this place?” Bobbi asked, strapped into the navigator’s seat behind us. “Shouldn’t some skeevy asshole be asking us for money by now?”
“Nothing,” Kane answered, and stopped as if that answer was satisfactory.
Frowning, I pushed my hands out against the g-forces and pulled up the communications display, turning the haptic hologram around from the incoming message tracker to a general signal analysis of all surface traffic. It showed a hiss of yellow static floating over the river valley in the northern hemisphere below us where the earliest residents had built the core of what had become Shakak.
“There’s wide-spectrum jamming down there,” I told Bobbi. I felt my brows knit as I examined the computer analysis. “And it’s coming from at least two different sources, maybe three or four.” I looked back to her, shaking my head. “They may not even know we’re coming unless someone happens to be looking up.”
